The original standard for fantasy roleplaying is taking another step in its storied pop culture history as the Dalelands of the Forgotten Realms is brought to life for gamers and fantasy enthusiasts across the world. Atari, one of the world’s most recognized publishers and producers of interactive entertainment and Bedlam Games announced today the release of the highly anticipated Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale on Xbox LIVE Arcade for the Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system from Microsoft and Windows PC.

Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale, a hack and slash action role playing game set in the deep mythology of the Forgotten Realms, is the first Dungeons & Dragons video game for connected consoles. Players are summoned by a mysterious mage and given the duty of defending their homeland as Rezlus, an evil Zhentarim Cleric looks to bring the power of the Black Lord Bane to Daggerdale. Restore order to the Dalelands by unlocking the secrets of the Mines of Tethyamar, defeating the evil within the treacherous Tower of the Void, leading to the final confrontation with Rezlus himself.

Born of the U.S. government’s 1928 raid on the degenerate coastal town of Innsmouth, Massachusetts, the covert agency known as Delta Green spent four decades opposing the forces of darkness with honor, but without glory. Stripped of sanction after a disastrous 1969 operation in Cambodia, Delta Green’s leaders made a secret pact: to continue their work without authority, without support, and without fear. Delta Green agents slip through the system, manipulating the federal bureaucracy while pushing the darkness back for another day-but often at a shattering personal cost.

Ten years ago, everything changed. It’s time you found out how.

It’s January 2001. The Delta Green agents code-named Cyrus and Charlie get the call: A young boy dead and buried for years has reappeared, healthy and happy, as if no time at all had passed and the disease that killed him had never been. The family thinks it’s a miracle, but Delta Green has seen too many miracles turn to madness. Cyrus and Charlie must discover what horrors lurk behind this one. The mission brings them to the brink of apocalypse-to the edge of the revelation and destruction of Delta Green-to secrets and terrors at the heart of reality itself.

Delta Green: Through a Glass, Darkly is a new novel written by Delta Green co-creator Dennis Detwiller. The book is finished. It’s been reviewed, revised and edited. Now Arc Dream Publishing is holding a Kickstarter project to raise the funds to publish it.

Flames Rising posted an earlier excerpt from Delta Green: Through a Glass, Darkly on April 30, 2011.

Here’s another glimpse.

While at PAX East this year, I had the pleasure of sitting in on a panel on developing independent RPGs. Vincent Baker was among the panelists, and I was incredibly excited to see the man who had created the well-known and critically acclaimed Dogs in the Vineyard. Immediately after the panel I went to his booth and saw that he had another game for sale, Apocalypse World. Its cover, featuring a nude, ambiguous form in a gas mask, haunched over and lit from behind, intrigued me– I had just finished my thesis on Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and was on an apocalypse kick, so although I had gone to the booth expecting to pick up DitV, I came away with a game I hadn’t even heard of before.

With Apocalypse World I didn’t really know what to expect. I admit, I don’t have very many systems under my belt– I’ve read far more games than I’ve actually played, and I don’t like to pass judgment on a system without actually playing it. But just from the get-go, Apocalypse World had a lot going for it.

Do you have what it takes to be a Greek God or Goddess? If so, then Relativity Media – the studio behind the visually spectacular 3D action adventure Immortals – wants you to sign up right away! Exclusively offered via Facebook today, the Relativity-Archaia Immortals promotion sponsored by Fandango, the nation’s leading moviegoer destination, will crown the winners on July 1 with a king’s ransom-worth of prizes, including a grand prize where contest winners will be immortalized as graphic novel characters with the “reveal” taking place at the Archaia panel during Comic-Con in a special photo-op ceremony. Winners will also receive an all-expenses-paid trip to San Diego to attend the 2011 Comic-Con International. The package includes airfare, hotel accommodations, and exclusive access to special Immortals events throughout the convention.

RPGNow is having a huge contest going on now. Special judges include Fred Hicks, Eddy Ebb and John Wick!

You could win a ViewSonic gTablet, Gift Certificates to RPGNow and more!

Delta Green: Intelligences is a new short story by Dennis Detwiller in the award-winning Delta Green setting.

Dennis’ company Arc Dream Publishing is holding a fundraiser for a new Delta Green novel, Through a Glass, Darkly. As the fundraiser hits milestones towards its goal, Arc Dream will release all-new Delta Green short stories to go along with it — starting with "Intelligences."

Here’s an excerpt.

On the heels of his new release from Apex Book Company, the multi-talented Guy Hasson drops by FlamesRising.com to tell us why he writes about women. This particular essay gives us insight into his intent behind writing three, distinct novellas and collecting them into a single collection called “Secret Thoughts.” For more about this author, playwright and filmmaker, be sure to visit Guy Hasson’s website. If you’re interested in checking out Hasson’s new release, you can pick up the Secret Thoughts e-book at DriveThruSciFi.com, or visit the publisher’s website for previews, reviews, additional formats and more!

Pelgrane Week continues with a new design essay by The Big Hoodoo author by Bill White. Bill discusses writing an adventure in 1950s California and other details for Trail of Cthulhu.

I’ve written two adventures for Trail of Cthulhu, a game of Lovecraftian investigation written by Kenneth Hite using Robin Laws’ GUMSHOE system. Both are unusual in that they are set in the 1950s, rather than TOC’s usual 1930s setting (itself one of the features that distinguishes Trail of Cthulhu from its more venerable cousin, Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu, which takes the 1920s as its canonical milieu). The first, called Castle Bravo, is set aboard an aircraft carrier in the South Pacific during nuclear bomb testing at Bikini Atoll. Its appeal is, I think, straightforward: an atomic bomb goes off and the PCs, as the naval and scientific personnel involved, must deal with monstrous emergences in its aftermath.

The long-awaited GUMSHOE-in-Space is finally here. Ashen Stars is the newest and biggest GUMSHOE game from RPG legend Robin D Laws. Being GUMSHOE, it is flexible, you can play it as hard sci-fi, space opera or cyberpunk or anything in between.

Available as a pre-pre-order now direct through the Pelgrane Press Online Store. Those who order get a simple PDF now, exclusive fiction, and your name in the credits, and then get the final PDF and a signed and numbered copy on release.

Pelgrane Week continues here at Flames Rising with a new design essay by Matthew Sanderson. Matthew tells us about writing the forthcoming The Love of Money scenario for the Esoterrorists RPG.

Looking back now, I think that best describes how the creative process began for me with The Love of Money. It all started with the hunt for an initial concept, a small seed, which then germinated and continued to expand into the final work. That hunt began with me asking myself one question: what would make this an Esoterrorist game? I’ve been playing roleplaying games now for about eleven years and in this time I’ve played in a great many games where I’ve thought it could work really well in another game’s setting. However, when I set about writing an adventure myself, I generally ask myself the question “why this game?” I like to feel that the story has a meaning, that it’s not a square peg trying to fit into a round hole.

Pelgrane Week continues here at Flames Rising with a new design essay by Paula Dempsey. Paula tells us about writing the Occult London a supplement for the Trail of Cthulhu RPG.

The Origins of the Occult Guide

I can’t recall agreeing to write Augustus Darcy’s Guide to Occult London. The idea was mooted towards the end of 2009 by Simon Rogers of Pelgrane Press and the concept came from him. By then Ken Hite was already working on Bookhounds of London and Simon wanted a guide to occult London in the 1930s to accompany Bookhounds. The back story for the guide, we decided, was that an occultist-about-town, who knew all the personalities in London at that time, was compiling this guide for a mysterious someone amidst murmurings that something very bad was about to happen. Unfortunately, when the occultist, Augustus Darcy, got near the truth he died mysteriously and his writings remained hidden for eighty years until, I believe, a dusty tome was discovered in Simon Rogers’ attic.

Over the years, FlamesRising.com has provided several reviews from games and music produced by Pelgrane Press.

To kick off Pelgrane Press Week today, we dug into our archives. In this round up of our top ten Gumshoe RPG reviews, we highlight your favorite games, supplements and gaming aids.

Take a trip with us into the keep as we remember what we liked (and what we didn’t) about games like Trail of Cthulhu and Mutant City Blues.

FlamesRising.com is pleased to announce a new type of theme week for our readers. From Monday, May 2nd 2011 through Friday, May 6th 2011 we will highlight a specific publisher.

To launch our new theme week, we have chosen Pelgrane Press as our featured publisher. If you’ve been following our site, you may recall we have provided you with popular previews, interviews, reviews and articles in the past. Based on this publisher’s popularity in the hobby games industry and with horror fans like you, we felt Pelgrane Press was a worthy choice.

Not familiar with Pelgrane Press, its Gumshoe System and its recently announced Stone Skin Press fiction imprint? For starters, why not check out our Cthulhu Apocalypse: The Dead White World Preview, which is the first part of the highly anticipated Cthulhu Apocalypse series by Graham Walmsley. From there, we recommend reading our recent interview with Robin D. Laws, our interview with Ken Hite and our interview with composer James Semple.

For Trail of Cthulhu RPG fans, don’t forget to check out our FlamesRising.com exclusive. Robin Laws provided us with Inmates: A Campaign Frame.

Curious about the Gumshoe System? Want to play games like Trail of Cthulhu and Esoterrorists but haven’t had the cash? To celebrate our first-ever publisher theme week, Pelgrane Press is sponsoring a contest here on FlamesRising.com!

Born of the U.S. government’s 1928 raid on the degenerate coastal town of Innsmouth, Massachusetts, the covert agency known as Delta Green spent four decades opposing the forces of darkness with honor, but without glory. Stripped of sanction after a disastrous 1969 operation in Cambodia, Delta Green’s leaders made a secret pact: to continue their work without authority, without support, and without fear. Delta Green agents slip through the system, manipulating the federal bureaucracy while pushing the darkness back for another day—but often at a shattering personal cost.

Ten years ago, everything changed. It’s time you found out how.

Through a Glass, Darkly is a new novel written by Delta Green co-creator Dennis Detwiller. The book is finished. It’s been reviewed, revised and edited. Now Arc Dream Publishing is holding a Kickstarter project to raise the funds to publish it. Here’s a glimpse.

FlamesRising.com is pleased to present an essay from author Paul Jessup, who wrote a novella entitled Open Your Eyes, published by Apex Book Company. In this surrealist space opera tale that takes place on a ship with a mind of its own, Jessup explores the unusual, the weird and the bizarre. Today he’ll discuss what space opera means to him and his motivation behind Open Your Eyes.

Open Your Eyes

I’m a huge fan of Space Opera, wait, no, scratch that– I’m a huge fan of what I was told was Space Opera when I was a kid. Which was primarily one thing- Star Wars. Which was more like the monomyth in Space, with Samurais, but I digress for a bit. If you’re a kid from the 80’s, you know the score. This kind of Space Opera was everywhere, not just in Star Wars, but in cartoons, on the back of cereal boxes, in toys (and knock off toys), in books, all that fun stuff.

Northlands is a Pathfinder-compatible sourcebook for adventuring in the frozen north. Learn Rune magic, explore the Reaver’s Coast and Hyperborea, and wield the sword of Loki himself.

Designer Dan Voyce has opened up new and dazzling vistas for role-playing in the frozen north. The book begins with a concise but detailed overview of northern life, society, morality, religion, traditions and law. The major gods and their demands on mortals are described, as well as dueling, hospitality, outlawry, slavery, and relations between the various humanoid races.

More than description, Northlands is about ACTION! Characters can raid the coasts; explore the magic-rich realm of the giants; enter savage kingdoms ruled by bears and wolves; or journey to the top of the world itself to retrieve the shoggoth-guarded flotsam and jetsam of alien shores.

I first picked up “Wanted” in a Borders bookstore right before the film adaptation came out. There, I flipped through the first five pages and then, remembering the trailer for the film, promptly put it down, wondering which of these were better summaries of what the comic would have to offer. What I had read seemed amazing, what I had seen on the television… less so. And so I went the next few years without reading the comic or seeing the film adaptation, occasionally catching glimpses of the book’s cover and flipping through those first few pages again, wondering if I should take the plunge.

When I first sat down to read it –to really, finally read it– the first thing I noticed was an introduction by Brian K. Vaughan. The praise of Vaughan, author of comic masterpieces like Y: The Last Man and Pride of Baghdad, would be invaluable to me as a reader.

Explore the world of writing horror from a Bram Stoker and International Horror Guild award-winning author’s point of view. Gary Braunbeck uses film, fiction and life experience to elucidate the finer points of storytelling, both in and out of genre. This part-autobiographical, always analytical book looks at how stories develop and what makes them work-or not work-when they’re told.

Be warned: reality is as brutal as fiction. Rob Zombie, police shootings, William Goldman and human misery are all teachers to the horror neophyte, and Braunbeck uses their lessons to make To Each Their Darkness a whirlwind of horror and hope for the aspiring writer.

Flames Rising is pleased to present the introduction to this book by Gary Braunbeck.

2K Games, Top Cow Productions, Inc., and the Free Comic Book Day Committee announced today that they have teamed up to produce The Darkness II: Confession, an exclusive comic tie-in for The Darkness II video game, for Free Comic Book Day. The 32-page, full-color comic will be a prequel to 2K Games’ upcoming video game, The Darkness II. Produced by Top Cow’s lead artists and writers in partnership with 2K Games, The Darkness II: Confession will be distributed by Diamond Comic Distributors to thousands of independent comic book stores worldwide on May 7, 2011.

“Top Cow has always supported Free Comic Book Day and this year we’ve created our best offering yet with The Darkness II: Confession, a prequel to the upcoming video game The Darkness II by 2K Games,” said self-proclaimed hardcore gamer and president of Top Cow, Matt Hawkins. “In working closely with 2K Games on the comic, we’ve ensured that everything fits into The Darkness’ canon for long-time and new fans of Jackie Estacado. This free comic is a perfect primer for the game.”

Since its inception in 2002, the Free Comic Book Day event has celebrated the original American comic book art form by supplying thousands of participating independent comic book specialty shops around the world with free comic books for fans.

The first part of the highly anticipated Cthulhu Apocalypse series.

The Investigators are rendered unconscious by a train crash. When they wake they discover the world has died. White flowers cover the ground and they see, beneath the delicate petals, the faces of the dead. No other human is in sight, everyone is gone.

The struggle to survive the apocalypse takes the Investigators through Britain, across the sea to America and beyond the veils of reality.

The Dead White World contains the first three scenarios for Cthulhu Apocalypse by Graham Walmsley, author of The Purist Adventures.

Flames Rising is pleased to present an exclusive preview of this new Trail of Cthulhu product from Pelgrane Press.